


Somewhere along a high road

by evilythedwarf



Category: Armageddon (1998)
Genre: Gen, Physical Disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:37:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evilythedwarf/pseuds/evilythedwarf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You want to take apart the universe and figure out what makes it work. You want to know how the moon feels under your feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere along a high road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlterEgon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlterEgon/gifts).



Somewhere along a high road

 

“He’ll be just fine,” is the first thing you hear.

You don’t know where you are or who is speaking or where your parents are. All you know is pain and dread and you won’t even open your eyes because you are so afraid of what you’ll see and fine is a very distant concept.

You fall asleep again.

“Be straight with me doctor, will he walk again?” is the next thing you hear and you don’t open your eyes but you focus hard; you are interested in the answer.

The doctor speaks and you try to follow up but anatomy and biology were never your strength and you know words like neuropathy and muscle atrophy and rehabilitation but you don’t know what they mean now, for you. You’ve forgotten everything, it seems. There’s only you in this room, in this bed. You feel someone’s hands, soft and warm, on your forehead, stroking your hair and it lulls you back to sleep.

Next morning you finally open your eyes. It’s not good. Weeks go by and things get worse. You finally understand this is it. You will never go back to before.

“He’s ready to go home,” they say. “He needs to get used to things, is all.”

“Come on, honey,” your mother says, reaching for your hand to help you into the chair. “Let’s go home!” she says, cheerfully.

There’s a banner over the couch in the living room, and the guys from the team come over and try acting like it’s not a big deal that you now need four wheels to get you from one place to the next. You don’t know where your father is and your mother stays upstairs until all the guys are gone. 

“It’s going to be alright,” she says. Everything will be fine, honey.”

You don’t scream at her, though you want to. You don’t cry or throw things, but you roll to your bedroom and use your old lacrosse stick to take down all the pictures in the walls while your mother cries in the kitchen and your father is still not home. 

The fighting starts about 3 weeks after you come home from the hospital:

“All he does is sit around and look out the window, Anthony, there has to be a way to help him!”

“Boy can’t walk Marie, what else s’he supposed to do?”

“They said he might get better! That he might walk again!”

“Yeah, and I might grow wings and fly. It is what it is, ain’t no point trying to sugarcoat things, now.”

Your mother makes fish sticks for dinner one night and makes you change out of the sweatpants you’ve been wearing for days. Makes you sit in a proper chair on the dining room.

“What do you want?” she asks you. “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”

Everything, you think. You want to drive a car, and run 20 yards. You want to know why this happened and find a way to fix it. You want so many things you will never get.

“Do you want to go to college?” she asks, suddenly.

“Yes,” you say, because that might be the only thing that hasn’t changed. You still want to know things. You want to take apart the universe and figure out what makes it work. You want to know how the moon feels under your feet. You still want things, so much, but now you know for sure you’re never getting them. “Can I go to my room?” you ask, tired already.

“You’re smart, honey. You were always so bright,” she tells you. She reaches for your hand, slowly, afraid you’re going to pull back. You won’t, but she changes her mind anyway and stands up, leaves the room. You can hear her heels clicking on the hardwood floor. When she comes back, she’s holding the pictures and posters you took down. She doesn’t look at you as she makes two neat piles. You can’t tear your eyes away from the first pile. The first picture is you and the team, last year, right after you made varsity. You don’t even remember who took it.

“Look at me,” your mother tells you, and her voice would be almost harsh if you didn’t know her that well, if you didn’t know she is just about to cry. You keep staring at the picture of you in your shiny red uniform, holding your helmet and smiling from ear to ear. 

“Look at me,” she repeats.

She reaches for you again, and this time she doesn’t hesitate. She curls her finger under your chin and gently forces you to raise your face. 

“Oh, honey,” she whispers. “Maybe you can’t do this anymore,” she says, “but you’re still the brightest person I’ve ever met. So what are you going to do?”

You’re going to walk. That’s a start. You can walk again, the doctors said, so you work hard, and then you work harder, and then one day you’re in the hospital’s gym after school and you are standing up, your hands clenched around the support bars, and your right foot moves forward and you take a step. And then another, and then another, and by next week you’re walking around with crutches and your wheelchair is collecting dust in the basement.

You can walk again, so now, what are you going to do?

You study, hard. You make up for all the time you lost after the accident and then some. You get good at the things you were bad at before and suddenly all the words make sense again. You know what gravity and mass and force mean to you again, the universe gets a little less difficult to understand and your place in it becomes a little clearer but you never stop wanting more, you never forget the feeling you get at night, standing in the garden and looking up at the stars and wanting them, wanting everything so damn much.

Maybe that will be enough.


End file.
